Non-impact electrographic printers generally use a dielectric surface to receive an electrostatic charge to form a latent image of the information that is desired to be printed; that latent image is, in accordance with known techniques, developed with a suitable toner and transferred to paper on which the image is thereafter fixed, as by heat. The electrostatic surface on which the latent image is formed is most often a moving dielectric, with an appropriate conductive ground plane, on which electrostatic information is provided, by a print head, and such a general combination can be found in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,638,339 entitled ELECTROGRAPHIC CHARGE DEPOSITION APPARATUS and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. Before the latent image can be effectively produced on the electrostatic surface, the image receiving dielectric surface must be cleaned of residual toner such as by the apparatus of co-pending application Ser. No. 07/131,753 entitled CLEANING SYSTEM FOR NON-IMPACT PRINTER, assigned to the same assignee of this invention.
Additionally, the electrostatic charge receiving surface of the dielectric belt should be conditioned by bringing that electrostatic surface voltage to the correct average level and with sufficient uniformity to be properly compatable with the image generation of the print head and the subsequent development process utilizing the toner. Direct charge deposition printers generally have low background to signal voltage relationships because of the nature of the charge deposition process; hence, corona flooding techniques of the prior art cannot be effectively utilized to prepare the dielectric surface of the printer belt of the present invention using direct charge deposition.